Oh, it's over. The cooking.
The constant running of the dishwasher. The freakish consumption
of paper towels. The scrambling to find 6 matching glasses that
don't have some kind of microbrew emblem painted on them.

It was a good time. I set the
table with the china and silver that was handed down from my
grandparents, and it looked very festive indeed. We had a luxurious
breakfast with JB acting as short order cook, then set into the
piles of presents stacked everywhere.

In an indulgent moment of pure
greed, let me tell you about some of the wonderful gifts I got.
CDs: Allison Krauss, Peter Gabriel, Chris Isaak. DVDs: American
Movie (yes! It includes Coven!), the first two seasons of Sex and
the City (thank you, Amazon Wish List). Two Shirley Jackson books.
Enormous bottle of Opium perfume. Subscription to InStyle magazine
(because I am a hopeless slut for trashy magazines featuring
impossibly beautiful people). And my favorite of all, a stunning
pair of diamond stud earrings from JB.

I know, it's not about the
presents. Except it is, just a little bit. I don't
get up at 5 AM to gallop around the tree anymore, but I LOVE
presents.

Afterwards, we all went for
a walk. In the rain. And the wind. Because, hey, we're from the
Northwest and we're tough. Or stupid. And then I set up camp
in the kitchen, boiling things and stirring things and plopping
things into dishes, hissing at anyone who got in my way. And
dinner was great.

I'd had a sore throat all day,
which steadily got worse (maybe that walk wasn't such a great
idea), so I ended up crawling into bed around 8:30 last night.
Pretty soon all my muscles started aching and I was freezing
to death. When JB finally came to bed I whimpered for him to
help me keep warm, and he yelped "you're burning up!"
the instant he curled against me. I shivered and my nose got
all plugged up and my throat felt like I'd swallowed some ground
glass and then around midnight my stomach started feeling super
queasy. "Don't you dare," I told myself firmly.
"I feel bad enough, thank you very much." And let's
just say the rest of the night was unpleasant indeed.

Today I just feel spacey and
snotty and generally blah, and I'm very glad I caught the bug
when I did and not a few days earlier, because dinner would have
been a very different event ("Here's your Top Ramen - enjoy.").

The in-laws left this morning,
and JB and his brother are out scuba diving. The house is quiet,
the dog is snoring, the cat has formed her meatloaf shape in
the hall. I'm wandering around trailing kleenexes and TheraFlus.
Peace on earth.

Picture taken from the Royal
Argosy on the 23rd. Christmas ship festival, I heart you.